After News Corp scandal, Rupert Murdoch must root out corruption

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesIn the wake of the News Corp. hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch faces a challenge in restoring the public's faith in his news operations.

Rupert Murdoch’s reversal of fortune over the past week has been breathtaking. The phone-hacking scandal laid bare illegal methods by reporters employed on his British newspapers to get the scoop on everyone from royals to a murdered teenager.

The Aussie press baron is paying dearly today for cultivating an anything-goes culture that violated the law and standards of decency: the moneymaking News of the World shut down, his $12 billion deal to acquire British Sky Broadcasting scuttled and top executives at his News Corp. forced to resign.

The latest victim: Les Hinton, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, the jewel in Murdoch’s U.S. media portfolio. Hinton had been a top executive in England during the period when the hacking took place.

Edward Wasserman, who holds the Knight chair in journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, said the scandal reflects a prior cultural tolerance for more brazen reporting techniques than what is typically used in the United States. Now New Jersey Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg and others are calling for the FBI to investigate whether the phones of 9/11 victims were hacked by the same overzealous press corps. Murdoch’s challenge will be to root out the corruption and restore faith in his news operations.